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General Mach Discussion / Spindle problem... slowly decreases RPM until stop.

« on: February 25, 2015, 01:07:13 PM »

I just added a PWM spindle to my machine (Mach3 > SmoothStepper USB > Gecko G540).  Now it runs, but with some very odd symptoms:

• The spindle gets up to speed quickly (1sec?), but then slowly drops in speed... from 2500 RPM initially, down to <100, then stall, over the course of 2-3 minutes.
• If I check voltage across Ground->Speed pins at the spindle, I can watch it correspondingly drop slowly from 5V down until it stops, in tiny increments.
• Power cycling the spindle or Gecko G540 does not fix it.
• Stopping and restarting the spindle from in Mach3 does not fix it.  In fact, if I stop the spindle, and restart it, it continues at whatever slow speed it was stopped at, and continues it's slow decline to stall.
• Changing the spindle acceleration in Motor Tuning of Mach3 has dramatic effects.  A setting of 1 gives the "slow decline" behavior above.  A setting of 5 causes the spindle to start, then stop within about 1-2 seconds.  A setting of 10 causes the spindle to start accelerating and then decelerate to a stop before it even reaches full speed (<1sec), then it will do the same thing when the spindle is stopped in Mach3.
• Closing, and restarting Mach3, without turning off or resetting anything else, will reset the problem... resetting the spindle to its full speed, to start a new slow decline.
• Also, not sure if this is  important, but I'm typing 2500 into the spindle box, Mach3 is showing 2500 in the sVo box, but the RPM box always shows less (~2415).

I'm thinking that since the problem persists until Mach3 is reloaded means the problem is likely in there somewhere.  Anyone have any ideas?

2

General Mach Discussion / Need help - gcode file hanging Mach3

« on: February 19, 2011, 02:17:50 PM »

I'm a Mach3 novice, so hopefully someone can help me.  Hopefully this is something I'm misunderstanding, and is easy to fix.

I recently bought a copy of BobCAD v24, and generated some g-code for a 3D model.  I'm using the "Mach3-NoATC" post processor (tried revisions 1 and 2), which my friend says he uses with Mach3.

When I load the g-code file into Mach3, it pops up the "generating toolpath" dialog, which seems to complete, then close, then open up again, then get stuck part way through.  I don't understand why it gets stuck.  You can see in the background, in the Mach3 code window, that it's stopping on line 5400-something, which is an N01 of some subprogram.

I've attached the .NC file.  Does it stick for others too?  Am I doing something wrong?